Why your external monitor's speakers aren't showing up on your Mac

If your external monitor's speakers never appear in Sound settings at all, the cause is almost always the cable or adapter carrying video without carrying audio. macOS can only list an output it can actually detect a signal from, and a silently video-only connection never sends one.

This is different from a monitor that shows up but sounds wrong, or one that used to work and stopped. If it has never once appeared as an output, work through the causes in this order: they are ranked by how often each one turns out to be it.

Does your cable actually carry audio?

Standard HDMI and standard DisplayPort both carry audio as part of the spec. If your Mac is plugged straight into the monitor with a genuine HDMI or DisplayPort cable and nothing else in between, the cable itself is very unlikely to be the problem.

Most modern Macs don't have an HDMI or DisplayPort port, though, so most setups involve an adapter or dock somewhere: USB-C to HDMI, USB-C to DisplayPort, or a hub with several ports built in. That's where audio quietly drops out. A passive adapter can pass video through fine while never wiring up the audio channel, particularly on cheap or older adapters built to a minimum spec rather than the full one.

Two adapter types are worth ruling out completely rather than half-checking: USB-C to DVI and USB-C to VGA. DVI and VGA are older display standards with no audio channel defined at all, on any cable or adapter. If that's what's between your Mac and the monitor, no setting anywhere will make the speakers appear, because there is no path for the audio to travel down.

Check the monitor's own on-screen menu

Assuming the cable is genuinely carrying audio, the next place to look is the monitor itself, not the Mac. Most external displays with built-in speakers have a setting buried in their on-screen menu, often labelled "Speakers", "Audio Out", or "Audio Source", that can be switched off entirely or pointed at a different input than the one your Mac is plugged into.

This matters most on monitors with more than one input, say an HDMI port and a DisplayPort port at once. If the monitor's audio source is set to "HDMI" but your Mac is connected via DisplayPort, the speakers stay silent, or in some models don't register as available at all, even though the cable and macOS side are both fine. Open the menu, find the audio setting, and confirm it's switched on and pointed at the right input.

Force macOS to redetect the display

macOS sometimes fails to re-register an audio-capable display after the Mac sleeps, after the monitor sleeps, or after a hot-plug where the cable was connected while the Mac was already running. The video half of the connection can recover fine while the audio half stays stuck in its old state.

The fix is a clean re-detection. Unplug the video cable, wait a few seconds, and plug it back in. If the speakers still don't appear, restart the Mac rather than the monitor: a full restart forces macOS to enumerate every connected device from scratch, including audio-capable displays a simple unplug and replug didn't fully reset.

Does your monitor actually have built-in speakers?

It's worth checking directly with your monitor's spec sheet or model number before assuming a fault exists. Plenty of displays, especially USB-C hub-style monitors and cheaper 24 to 27 inch office panels, have no built-in speakers at all. No cable, adapter, or setting can make audio hardware appear that was never fitted in the first place. Search the exact model number plus "speakers" rather than trusting the box art, since manufacturers sometimes sell the same chassis with and without speakers as separate models.

What if you have more than one audio-capable display connected?

When two or more connected displays can each carry audio, whether that's two monitors or a monitor plus a dock with its own audio breakout, macOS sometimes lists only one of them as an available output rather than both. The second one isn't missing or broken; it just isn't the one currently selected.

Open System Settings, go to Sound, then Output, and check the full list rather than just the highlighted device. If a second display's speakers are present but not selected, clicking it should make it active immediately. If it isn't in the list at all, work back through the cable, monitor menu, and re-detect steps above for that specific display.

Where does Chorus fit in?

Chorus doesn't touch any of the causes above. It works with outputs macOS has already detected and listed in Sound settings; it can't add an audio channel to a cable that doesn't carry one, override a monitor's own speaker setting, or invent hardware in a monitor that has none. Get the speakers showing up as a real, selectable output first.

Once they do, Chorus is what saves you from switching manually every time. If you now have two usable outputs, say the Mac's own speakers and the monitor you just got working, Chorus lets you group both into one output with a single volume, or send specific apps to specific outputs, so you're not reopening Sound settings every time you want sound somewhere else. It's a $4.99 one-time purchase, with a 30-day free trial that includes every feature, no account or card details needed to start.

For the step-by-step on building a Multi-Output Device, see Apple's own guide to Audio MIDI Setup.

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